Tony Dalton on the Mexican narco who played in Better Call Saul: “They want to blame the actors”

“Very interesting things are coming, very strong plot twists,” Tony Dalton told Infobae Mexico regarding the long-awaited sixth season of Better Call Saul, the famous prequel to Breaking Bad that today arrives on the Netflix platform in Mexico.

This is the latest installment of the series starring Bob Odenkirk, where the Laredo Texas-born, of Mexican descent, plays “Lalo Salamanca”, the charismatic head of a drug cartel.

Tony came to the project in 2017, and thanks to his performance, in this sixth season he became the co-star of the series that he shot in Albuquerque, New Mexico, during the pandemic.

“Here with great expectation that they will see how the story of all the characters unfold, especially of 'Saul', how they end this journey that lasted ten years, from Breaking Bad and until now, which is the culmination of everything,” he said.

Dalton, who began his career on Mexican screen in the early 2000s with Televisa projects such as The Simulators, No Equivoques and the youth soap operas Class 406 and Rebelde, said he is very pleased to have been chosen to appear in this cult series created by Vince Gilligan.

“We finished recording about six months ago. The truth is what they wrote is at the level, but it is just like Breaking Bad because they threw all the meat on the grill. To have been able to work with such a great group of people and with some really impressive filmmakers, very grateful for the opportunity to chat with them”.

On the reason why his character, a friendly Mexican drug trafficker, has managed to put himself in the public's taste to the extent that he lengthens his participation, Dalton attributes it to the story's libretto.

“It is very well written, they are great writers and the whole team that is there... It came to me through a casting, just like most things, they talk to you, they call you to casting, you do it and if they like you you you do a callback, you come back and that's how we did it,” he recalled.

Although there are voices that indicate that characters such as “Lalo Salamanca” or “El señor Ávila”, a character in the series of the same name for whose performance Tony Dalton won an Emmy Award, and that he is a hit man posing as an insurance salesman, would be a bad example for society by exalting violence or drug trafficking , the actor considers this perception as an exaggeration.

“I don't deserve much opinion. Opinions are like navels, everyone has their own and one thinks that the other's is very ugly. I mean, this question has been asked to me many times, what if we are promoting aggression? Well, no, what we do is... we all as humans are a story, which are a mirror of who we are, in this case they exist and the story is told about them as well.”

Tony, who during the filming of Better Call Saul worked simultaneously playing “Jack Duquesne (Swordsman)” in the new Marvel Hawkeye series, becoming the first Mexican to enter this popular universe of superheroes, compared his work playing characters that could be considered violent with that of director Quentin Tarantino.

“Now everyone, how many times has Tarantino been asked that if he promotes violence and does not promote violence, it is like life, I say, then they want to blame the actors because they play a drug dealer... let's see, they're giving me a shamba... now it turns out that I'm to blame...”, he said.

The actor who won a major screening with the 2004 film Matando Cabos, which he wrote and starred in, said he was available to return to Mexican cinema, this after his participation on Amalgama, recently released on Netflix.

“Yes, geez, of course, yes strange, I did one recently called Amalgama that is directed by Carlos Cuarón, we always have to support our own cinema and our industry, so I am happy to continue working in Mexico always”.

The 47-year-old history finds no difference between the US and Mexican film industries, since he assured that his work is always the same and depends on his preparation for each project:

“It's the same thing, a set is a set, schedules are schedules, work is work, being filming in Albuquerque looks like you're filming in Tepito, there's no change. A set is the same here and in China.”

Better Call Saul premieres on April 19 with the first two episodes of season 6. A new chapter will be released every week until May 24 to take a break and continue with the second part on July 12, premiering a new chapter every week until August 1.

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